The History Of Computers Essay

1215 words - 5 pages

Computers
This essay will explore the history of computers, show its importance and analyse theories of future computers and their use.

Computers definition
A computer defines as a device that accepts information and manipulates it for results based on instructions. The instructions are saved in the device as so called "Programs" and creating instructions is therefore called "Programming".
There are usually two kinds of computers. Either a computer with only one program built into it or a customizable computer that can run different programs and also be available for programming new programs.
These two types of computers can be found all over the society, in cars, households, stores, infrastructure etc.

History
The first computer device was created by a mechanical engineer and polymath named Charles Babbage. He is considered as ”father of the computer” since invented the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. In 1833 Charles had just finished his revolutionary difference engine, a mechanical calculator. Upon completion he realized that a much more general design, a Analytical Engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was gonna be provided to the machine with punched cards. For output the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later.
The machine was too early for its time. All thousands parts for the machine was made by hand. That was a major problem. Eventually the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding.
But then his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the Analytical Engine in 1888. He gave a successful demostration of its use in 1906.

The Analytical Engine was the birth of thousands of new ideas. A couple of years after the demostration in 1906 the so called ”Modern Computer” was invented. Modern computer follow the idea of storing programs. The idea was laid out by John von Neumann, a mathematician and polymath, in 1945. The idea was that the program is read by the computer one instruction at a time. An operation is performed, and the computer then reads in the next instruction and so on. Today computers and programs can be allowed to run multiple programs so they can work on the same problem at the same time.

In World War II the germans built a machine that cracked encrypted messages, this was the first electronic digital programmable computer. It was named Colossus and were built by Max Newman and his colleagues. First Colossus was finished 1943 and was named Mark 1. The second Colossus was finished 1944 and named Mark 2. The more known computer, ENIAC, was built in the US 1946. ENIAC was similiar to Colossus but much faster and more flexible. These computers was constructed with so called Vacuum tubes. The vacuum tubes was behind the ”thinking” of the computer.

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